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    Life in a Medieval Castle
    Life in a Medieval Castle
    Life in a Medieval Castle
    Ebook62 pages58 minutes

    Life in a Medieval Castle

    By Brenda Ralph Lewis

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    How would you feel if you woke up in a medieval castle tomorrow morning? What would your bed be like? What would you eat? What sights and smells would be around you? Whisking you back in time, this little book will show you exactly what it would be like to be there.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe History Press
    Release dateSep 16, 2011
    ISBN9780752470573
    Life in a Medieval Castle

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    • 2/5
      Not aimed at anyone who knows the least amount of "real" history of the Middle Ages. It contains lots of classic errors, and just enough good information that it might be considered dangerous.

    Book preview

    Life in a Medieval Castle - Brenda Ralph Lewis

    Hawking

    CHAPTER 1

    A Land of Castles

    The medieval world was a military society. It had to be. In around AD 476, the Roman Empire finally fell before concerted barbarian onslaughts, leading to an era of near perpetual violence, invasion and instability. Marauding tribes – Huns, Goths, Vandals – spread terror across great swathes of Europe. This was no brief encounter. Even before the Romans abandoned their imperial province of Britannia in around AD 426, its inhabitants were receiving the destructive attentions of Anglo-Saxons from Germany and Denmark. Raiders were still coming three, four and five centuries later, as the Vikings crossed the North Sea from Scandinavia first to raid along the east coast of England, later to displace the established population and settle their territory.

    Wherever they went and whoever they were, the attackers left a trail of disaster and death behind them. They ravaged settlements, villages and towns. They sacked monasteries and churches where tempting treasure could be found. Murder, mayhem and pillage became the currency of the time, and survival was at a premium. Early victims – like the Britons living in Scarborough, which was raided by the Anglo-Saxons in AD 409 – were virtually helpless before this storm of brutal aggression. In time, though, the response that developed was characterised by self-defence of ever-increasing power and ingenuity.

    The earliest defences comprised huge earthworks, timber-built forts, sometimes incorporating stonework, or motte and bailey castles. The motte and bailey, the first of which was built on the River Loire in France around AD 990, was a mound, sometimes with a wooden tower, surrounded by a moat and topped by a wooden palisade. This was primitive compared with the more romantic, yet at the same time much more daunting, medieval castle, a vast, complex stone-built structure with walls several feet thick, heavily fortified towers and a drawbridge spanning a deep moat.

    This mighty fortress developed in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, but despite its fearsome aspect and the chances it offered for tenacious defence, its purpose was no longer solely military, but political and social as well. Gradually, over time, the nomadic raiders who once lived in the saddle, moving from one scene of pillage and slaughter to the next, settled down into more permanent communities. Now, they lived in towns, villages or hamlets, and became farmers, woodsmen or fishermen.

    This did not mean a peaceful or even civilised society. Europe was still a dangerous place, still at the mercy of outlaws, brigands and troublemakers. In this context, the castle acquired a fresh function for the ruling elite, as a means of control over their neighbourhood and its inhabitants. It became a forbidding presence looming over the landscape, and acted as a warning to potential wrongdoers. It was also an unmistakable statement of wealth and power and stood as a sign that the local lord could be disobeyed or challenged only at great personal risk.

    The Normans who constructed the first substantial castles in Britain after their invasion of 1066 certainly used them as a deterrent to anyone minded to resist their rule. The punitive nature of the Norman resolve to be absolute masters in their newly conquered territory was demonstrated in the north of England where their response to rebellion in 1069–70 was savage in the extreme. They devastated the region, set fire to crops, killed cattle, burned homes, slaughtered the inhabitants, and smashed the farming implements that might have enabled the survivors to remake some sort of life for themselves.

    Fortunately, the depredations in the north of England were not an everyday event. But it came to typify just how far King William was willing to go to assert his authority. The dread lesson sank deep into the English consciousness. Afterwards, even a glimpse of a Norman castle across a field or rising above the horizon or the trees in the forest was a stern reminder of the price disobedience exacted and might exact again.

    Ironically, this grim symbol of strength and retribution also suggested a certain weakness in the feudal system by which the Normans and their Plantagenet successors ruled in England. Feudalism was a pyramid arrangement, with the king at its apex. His magnates and the tenants and labourers on their estates occupied the ranks below and each owed fealty and obedience to those who belonged to the rank above. Although this gave the appearance of binding society tightly together through interlocking duties and obligations, the system was essentially decentralised.

    Decentralisation was not normally a problem where a king, such as William I, exercised firm control over his realm; but it was a recipe for trouble where a king

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